Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GreenSME (Driving manufacturing SME transformation towards green, digital and social sustainability)
Período documentado: 2022-06-01 hasta 2023-11-30
The European Green Deal plans to make the EU's economy sustainable, resource efficient and climate neutral by 2050. Manufacturing is among the key driving forces of the European economy and their engagement is a must to achieve SDG and Green Deal objectives. EU manufacturing industry, in particular SMEs, need to become greener and digitalized, while remaining globally competitive in a challenging market, but the adoption of Sustainability by SMEs is slow and uneven.
The vision of greenSME is to strengthen SME capacity for advanced technologies adoption to become competitive and climate neutral, maximising the benefits for all parts of society.
This project vision implies SMEs to develop a strategic approach to sustainability. It handles next challenges:
(i) Increase SMEs awareness and knowledge about sustainability´s role in their business,
(ii) strength manufacturing SMEs capacity for technologies uptake for economic, social, and environmental sustainability,
(iii) strength EU sustainable manufacturing ecosystem, by developing a roadmap for the existing clusters in Europe to develop strategies to support sustainable businesses.
Furthermore, and in addition to technology, social innovation will accelerate the sustainability adoption to ensure that any development is inclusive and fair within a strong EU manufacturing ecosystem.
To achieve the aforementioned vision, the following objectives have been settled:
Objective 1. Build a sustainable manufacturing SME innovation community: greenSME HUB
The HUB will become a knowledge sharing area that gathers resources, activities, and stakeholders to enable the uptake of AT by SMEs for sustainability. greenSME is committed with open science approach, and it will be open to all EU sustainability initiatives, that will stimulate a process of sharing information and experiences, where SMEs and ecosystem players can learn from each other
Objective 2. Strengthen manufacturing SMEs capacity for AT adoption for sustainability
The sustainability challenge should not be addressed only from an economic perspective by focusing on obtaining short-term profits at any cost. The three key pillars, social, economic and environmental, must be addressed. SMEs sustainability transformation pathway will guide SMEs to overcome these challenges and ensure their resilience and sustainability over time.
Objective 3. Sustainability principles adoption by manufacturing SMEs
As a result of the sustainability assessments, SMEs will participate into a,further advisory service that will deliver a tailored Advanced Sustainability Action Plan (ASAP) for each SMEs. Once they have prioritized a project (and it has been validated by the project consortium) SME will receive financial support, to implement the elaborated action plan. The financial support will be provided in the form of ‘Third party financing’ calls for SMEs
The vision of greenSME is to strengthen SME capacity for advanced technologies adoption to become competitive and climate neutral, maximising the benefits for all parts of society.
This project vision implies SMEs to develop a strategic approach to sustainability. It handles next challenges:
(i) Increase SMEs awareness and knowledge about sustainability´s role in their business,
(ii) strength manufacturing SMEs capacity for technologies uptake for economic, social, and environmental sustainability,
(iii) strength EU sustainable manufacturing ecosystem, by developing a roadmap for the existing clusters in Europe to develop strategies to support sustainable businesses.
Furthermore, and in addition to technology, social innovation will accelerate the sustainability adoption to ensure that any development is inclusive and fair within a strong EU manufacturing ecosystem.
To achieve the aforementioned vision, the following objectives have been settled:
Objective 1. Build a sustainable manufacturing SME innovation community: greenSME HUB
The HUB will become a knowledge sharing area that gathers resources, activities, and stakeholders to enable the uptake of AT by SMEs for sustainability. greenSME is committed with open science approach, and it will be open to all EU sustainability initiatives, that will stimulate a process of sharing information and experiences, where SMEs and ecosystem players can learn from each other
Objective 2. Strengthen manufacturing SMEs capacity for AT adoption for sustainability
The sustainability challenge should not be addressed only from an economic perspective by focusing on obtaining short-term profits at any cost. The three key pillars, social, economic and environmental, must be addressed. SMEs sustainability transformation pathway will guide SMEs to overcome these challenges and ensure their resilience and sustainability over time.
Objective 3. Sustainability principles adoption by manufacturing SMEs
As a result of the sustainability assessments, SMEs will participate into a,further advisory service that will deliver a tailored Advanced Sustainability Action Plan (ASAP) for each SMEs. Once they have prioritized a project (and it has been validated by the project consortium) SME will receive financial support, to implement the elaborated action plan. The financial support will be provided in the form of ‘Third party financing’ calls for SMEs
Activites to be performed.
WP1 – EU sustainable manufacturing Roadmap
This WP aims to ensure sustainability awareness and industry engagement. It has got two-fold objectives: 1) Communication activities related to Sustainability awareness between manufacturing SMEs and ecosystem stakeholders such as Cluster organization. It includes networking with other relevant EU and local initiatives and existing platforms and clusters. 2) Industry engagement into the sustainability transformation pathway and greenSME community.
WP2 – greenSME manufacturing community
It sets-up the manufacturing community for knowledge sharing among SMEs, large enterprises, research centers, AT technology providers and other stakeholders around three-pillar sustainability (economic, social, environmental).
It includes sustainability awareness and implementation strategies best practices and engagement material such as catalogues, trainings information, new technologies, best practices and funding opportunities. Technology providers and social innovation enablers will receive training in sustainability.
WP3 – Sustainability assessments and ASAP definition
The WP collects all the activities required to lead SMEs into their sustainability transformation pathway, a set of sustainability assessment services. Its starting point is the SustaINdustry assessment tool, which will be enhanced with various methods to support SMEs to make informed decisions about AT, social innovation, and new business models. In addition, it includes sustainability advisors service to support SMEs. The advisor will lead the matchmaking services facilitating SMEs to develop the assessment and have access to the suitable expertise in the AT for sustainable manufacturing field.
WP4 – Open calls for at and social innovation implementation according to the budget distribution
It collects the activities related to launch, manage, and support the open calls in technical, legal, and financial aspects and provide SMEs with all the supporting measures designed along the project for social innovation and AT uptake for three- pillar sustainability. The overall objectives of the WP are:
• Open Calls Infrastructure preparation and launch
• Evaluation and selection of the SMES applications, SMEs & Services providers, Agreement’s management.
• Support and monitoring of the implementation services, including flow of payments.
• Methodologies to monitor the quality and the impact of the services provided to the SMEs.
WP5 – Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation
The communication and dissemination plan to share project outputs to targeted groups. The exploitation will analyze project outputs. Regarding the greenSME HUB, it will include governance issues and a business plan for its sustainability over time.
WP6 - Management deals with the effective planning, managing, and controlling of the project activities, including the risks and the quality of the project results management, ensuring a good cooperation among partners, and reporting the project activities to EC.
WP1 – EU sustainable manufacturing Roadmap
This WP aims to ensure sustainability awareness and industry engagement. It has got two-fold objectives: 1) Communication activities related to Sustainability awareness between manufacturing SMEs and ecosystem stakeholders such as Cluster organization. It includes networking with other relevant EU and local initiatives and existing platforms and clusters. 2) Industry engagement into the sustainability transformation pathway and greenSME community.
WP2 – greenSME manufacturing community
It sets-up the manufacturing community for knowledge sharing among SMEs, large enterprises, research centers, AT technology providers and other stakeholders around three-pillar sustainability (economic, social, environmental).
It includes sustainability awareness and implementation strategies best practices and engagement material such as catalogues, trainings information, new technologies, best practices and funding opportunities. Technology providers and social innovation enablers will receive training in sustainability.
WP3 – Sustainability assessments and ASAP definition
The WP collects all the activities required to lead SMEs into their sustainability transformation pathway, a set of sustainability assessment services. Its starting point is the SustaINdustry assessment tool, which will be enhanced with various methods to support SMEs to make informed decisions about AT, social innovation, and new business models. In addition, it includes sustainability advisors service to support SMEs. The advisor will lead the matchmaking services facilitating SMEs to develop the assessment and have access to the suitable expertise in the AT for sustainable manufacturing field.
WP4 – Open calls for at and social innovation implementation according to the budget distribution
It collects the activities related to launch, manage, and support the open calls in technical, legal, and financial aspects and provide SMEs with all the supporting measures designed along the project for social innovation and AT uptake for three- pillar sustainability. The overall objectives of the WP are:
• Open Calls Infrastructure preparation and launch
• Evaluation and selection of the SMES applications, SMEs & Services providers, Agreement’s management.
• Support and monitoring of the implementation services, including flow of payments.
• Methodologies to monitor the quality and the impact of the services provided to the SMEs.
WP5 – Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation
The communication and dissemination plan to share project outputs to targeted groups. The exploitation will analyze project outputs. Regarding the greenSME HUB, it will include governance issues and a business plan for its sustainability over time.
WP6 - Management deals with the effective planning, managing, and controlling of the project activities, including the risks and the quality of the project results management, ensuring a good cooperation among partners, and reporting the project activities to EC.
Sustainability pathway will enable SME shift into a green and digital strategies which will align their activity with Green Deal goals. It implies an increased resilience of SMEs, by fostering technological and social innovation in SMEs to support their transition to more sustainable business models and more resource-efficient and circular processes and infrastructures.
For policy makers and SME support networks, greenSME will develop accurate industry knowledge. It will enable to support sustainability, and to design policies for effective deployment, and monitoring of Sustainability.
The expected exploitable results are identified:
- EU manufacturing SME sustainability roadmap
- The greenSME HUB
- THe greenSME sustainability assessment tool and ASAP definition methodology
- SME sustainabiltiy pathway and AT implementation good practices white book
For policy makers and SME support networks, greenSME will develop accurate industry knowledge. It will enable to support sustainability, and to design policies for effective deployment, and monitoring of Sustainability.
The expected exploitable results are identified:
- EU manufacturing SME sustainability roadmap
- The greenSME HUB
- THe greenSME sustainability assessment tool and ASAP definition methodology
- SME sustainabiltiy pathway and AT implementation good practices white book